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Topic: Crack-a-two-a as Preamp? (Read 580 times)

I have read on the Crack forum about people using the Crack as a preamp, but have not seen anything for the Crack-a-two-a as a preamp. Has anyone tried it? if so what were the results? I would think that it would edge out the Crack, because of the shunt regulation and larger power transformer.

I'm very interested in this as well. Paul, could you please explain what advantages the Smash would have over the Crackatwoa as a preamp? Would it not be subtle?

For me, having multiple inputs and a balance control is very appealing (which both have obviously). But with the Crackatwoa, I could use my prized 6F8G tubes with an adapter, and have a great headphone amp as well. Just seems like a great all-inclusive centerpiece to my audio system.

Doc has said about the Crack as a preamp: "Gain is about 15dB. Rule of thumb is about 10dB for a line stage." Is this the same for the Crackatwoa? Also, I padded the volume pot on my Crack, would doing this to the Crackatwoa lower the 15db closer to 10db? Sorry, for being a noob and thanks for any help!

P.S. Wish I could be there for the Bottlehead meet but I'm in Sunriver, Oregon with family. Hopefully next time, I'd love to hear the Kaiju!

The Smash will sound much, much better as a preamp than a Crack or Crack-a-two-a. This is going to be measurable as less distortion, but it qualitatively more complicated than this since the Smash is a zero feedback design.

The 6F8G would work just fine in the Smash-up as the regulator tube.

Crack-a-two-a has the same gain as the Crack, but the combination volume/balance control has a few dB of insertion loss, so it ends up being a bit less.

The Crack-a-two-a, much like the Smash, can accept our attenuator upgrade. This removes the low level tracking issues that some pots have.